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arXiv · 1309.4732

Sub-Doppler Cooling of Neutral Atoms in a Grating Magneto-Optical Trap

J. Lee·J. A. Grover·L. A. Orozco·S. L. Rolston
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Abstract

The grating magneto-optical trap (GMOT) requires only one beam and three planar diffraction gratings to form a cloud of cold atoms above the plane of the diffractors. Despite the complicated polarization arrangement, we demonstrate sub-Doppler cooling of 87Rb atoms to a temperature of 7.6(0.6) uK through a multi-stage, far-detuned GMOT in conjunction with optical molasses. A decomposition of the electric field into polarization components for this geometry does not yield a mapping onto standard sub-Doppler laser-cooling configurations. With numerical simulations, we find that the polarization composition of the GMOT optical field, which includes sigma- and pi-polarized light, does produce sub-Doppler temperatures.

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J. Lee, J. A. Grover, L. A. Orozco, S. L. Rolston. 2013-09-19. Sub-Doppler Cooling of Neutral Atoms in a Grating Magneto-Optical Trap. https://doi.org/10.1364/josab.30.002869

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